Republican Clown Show Open Thread

I’m heading over to the Roanoke Park Place Tavern (our DL bar) to meet a couple of friends and watch the “debate”. Please join me if you feel so inclined. Otherwise join the fun in the comment thread below.

5:47: Talking heads populate the tube in the Roanoke.

5:53: Reince Priebus makes the laughable claim that the Republicans are the party of diversity. Riiiiiigggggghhhhht.

5:58: Goddamnit. If they are going to sing the Star Spangled Banner at the start of a debate, I fucking want a ball, referees with whistles, timeouts, injuries, and the occasional physical altercation.

6:04: What the fuck the Canadian guy dodges the question about employment and economic growth to babble about Obama not mentioning “prisoners” that Obama knew were not prisoners? What a putz!

6:08: Kasich is in a particularly babbly mood this evening. No idea what the take-home was from that.

6:10: Chris Christie thinks Americans are cowards!

6:12: It is funny watching Cruz and Christie try to make something evil out of the Iranian incident. It is like they’ve rehearsed and rehearsed and then when it turns out to be absolutely nothing, they couldn’t not go ahead with their talking points.

6:16: Rubio seems angry….

6:17: Carson suggests that we no longer have “airforces” in 21st century warfare.

6:19: Paris has the “strictest no-good policy”, says Trump? It seems Trump got together before the debate to share in his stash of babble pills.

6:21: Ted Cruz does not seem to understand the difference between the news branch and the editorial branch of the NYT.

6:47: So far, Donald Trump has make a total ass of himself. Ben Carson and John Kasich have engaged in quasi-random babble. Ted Cruz has offered Trump the VP slot. Christie has endorsed Rubio. Rubio has come off as an angry psychopath. And Jeb Bush has almost smiled. Once.

To be fair, the comments section is destroying America. One caps lock at a time.

A former law clerk to the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court just said he made a “paperwork error” involving $1 million. I guess for Republicans that’s chump change. For this working-stiff lawyer rabbit, that’s my entire net worth, so I don’t think I would take a million-dollar loan as lightly as he does.

Btw, our country is NOT in a terrible mess. It’s not in perfect shape yet, but it’s in much better shape than the terrible mess Two Term President Obama inherited from his incompetent Republican predecessor.

@7 So? They strayed into Iranian waters because the navigator fucked up. He’s supposed to know how to read a map and compass. If someone wanders into my house, guess what’s gonna happen? He’s going to be held at gun point, on his knees, hands on head, by a rabbit wearing a cute cottontail and bunny ears, until the cops arrive and take him away. He can explain later how he ended up there. What does this make me? A rabbit defending his territory. You seem to have this idea that everyone else in the world should kiss our asses, simply because we’re bigger than them, and we should bomb them if they don’t. You are one stupid fucker. That’s how Hitler thought.

Hey Puddy, I have a thought exercise for you. In 1988, the crew of a U.S. Navy ship intruding into Iranian waters fired a missile at an Iranian civilian airliner, killing 290 innocent men, women, and children, most of them Iranian citizens. Do you think we should have apologized? Do you think we should have admitted legal liability? Do you think we should have paid compensation to the victims’ families? Or should we have told them to fuck off because we’re the United States of America and we can go into other people’s houses and push them around whenever we feel like it? And if you were Iran, would you investigate U.S. Navy boats intruding into your waters?

Rubio’s answer to American workers’ inability to compete against $1-a-day Chinese labor is to cut corporate taxes, which are already at their lowest level since World War 2. Notice he didn’t say anything about cutting workers’ taxes?

“I support Planned Parenthood privately with my personal contribution and that should be the goal of any such agency, to find private donations,” Christie was quoted saying in The Star-Ledger on Sept. 30, 1994. “It’s also no secret that I am pro-choice.”

“5:58: Goddamnit. If they are going to sing the Star Spangled Banner at the start of a debate, I fucking want a ball, referees with whistles, timeouts, injuries, and the occasional physical altercation.”

Careful what you wish for – they’ll evrntually end up having cheerleaders too, that will all probably look like Kim Davis.

Jeb! just took a cheap shot at Obama. The debate is over, but he’s being interviewed by moderator Neil Cavuto, and he criticized Obama for not meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah during the latter’s visit to Washington this week. That’s dishonest. Obama couldn’t meet with Abdullah because his visit conflicted with the president’s State of the Union preparations. The vice president and secretary of state met with him instead. That’s not a snub, and to imply it is, is just dishonest. Just another example that Republicans never let up on waging partisan warfare, and everything they say and do has that as its sole purpose and end.

What the hell does that have to do with yesterday’s incident? Good to see R senile agrees American’s servicemen should be held at gunpoint with their hands on their heads. Why do you always deliver incidents that have no relevance or bearing on what our soldiers went through yesterday?

Still getting your ideas from Daily Kooks eh? So what did we do in 1996? Did we apologize under a different regime R senile? Did we pay reparations R senile? Seems Cigar Bill was of a similar mindset! http://www.dailykos.com/story/.....n-290-Dead

Puddy called it right out of the box. The Iranian incident was brought up!

@24 “What the hell does that have to do with yesterday’s incident? … Why do you always deliver incidents that have no relevance or bearing on what our soldiers went through yesterday?”

If you think the 1988 U.S. shootdown of an Iranian airliner has nothing to do with yesterday’s incident, and has no relevance to how Iran reacts to U.S. intrusions into their territory in the present, you’re even dumber than we thought. You may have that short a memory, but they don’t.

I didn’t say we apologized. I simply asked the question. And, like any good lawyer, I knew the answer before I asked it. Of course the Republican administration at the time didn’t apologize for negligently killing 254 Iranian citizens; Republicans never take responsibility for anything, even when they’re clearly in the wrong as in this case. All the Iranians got from Bush’s diplomacy factory was a statement of “regret” and they’re probably still mad about it.

Nor did the Republican administration in charge of this clusterfuck admit legal liability, even after Iran dragged them into an international court. They’re Republicans, remember? If a Republican hit your car in a parking lot, he’d claim it didn’t have its turn signal on, and you’d have to complain to state insurance regulators to get anything from his insurance company. I’m sure the Iranians remember that, too.

The Bushies did, however, eventually pay compensation of roughly $231k per victim. It probably didn’t seem like enough to the survivors, or their government, and no doubt they also remember how cheap we were with Iranian lives.

So, yeah, I think they’re thinking about all this stuff when armed U.S. vessels enter their territorial waters without notice or permission, even if you aren’t.

Like I said above, if I were them, I’d pull guns on those sailors and order them to put their hands up, too. You think our sailors shouldn’t have complied? You’d rather see them get shot?

What do you think Two Term President Obama’s responsibility was here? When 10 of our sailors fucked up and strayed into a hostile country’s territorial waters? Puff his chest out and tell the Iranians to go fuck themselves? Or get them back in one piece? Don’t answer, you’ll make yourself look like an even bigger idiot.

And, by the way, it wasn’t Obama who apologized. The apology came from the sailors themselves. Whether they were authorized to do that is something their commanders can discuss with them if that’s an issue. They evidently felt it was the wise thing to do under the circumstances. I’ll bet you would, too, if you were staring down a gun barrel and looking at 10 years in an Iranian jail.

You are a fucking idiot, no two ways about it. Do humanity a favor by getting a brain and unfucking yourself.

Couple of corrections to @26. One, Bush wasn’t president when this incident occurred, Reagan was. Two, the notes of regret and compensation payments were authorized in 1996, when Clinton was in office, so the Republicans never accepted any responsibility or expressed any condolences for this incident, even though it occurred on their watch. And it wouldn’t surprise me if Republicans criticized Clinton for allegedly “apologizing for America.”

When today’s GOP candidates stand up there and boast, “I will never apologize for America,” they’re saying we should never admit our mistakes, we should never say we’re sorry, we should never make it right. Most people outgrow that by the time they’re 12 years old. These characters apparently didn’t have any parenting when they were young.

“The suit describes the [Center for Medical Progress] as a ‘complex criminal enterprise conceived and executed by anti-abortion extremists,’ and says that ‘the aim of the fake enterprise—which stretched over years and involved fake companies, fake identifications, and large-scale illegal taping, was to demonize Planned Parenthood.'”

The lawsuit asks for declaratory and injunctive relief, and unspecified restitution, compensatory, and punitive damages, along with costs, which presumably will amount to many tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.

Chris Christie claimed in tonight’s debate that, “I don’t think the Founders put the second amendment as number two by accident. I think they made the Second Amendment the Second Amendment because they thought it was just that important.”

But as Mother Jones points out, the Second Amendment wasn’t second on the list; it was fourth because the original Bill of Rights contained 12 amendments, not 10; the first 2 weren’t ratified by the states. MJ also points out the Founding Fathers probably didn’t list the Bill of Rights in any particular order, given that they “were drunk most of the time,” which of course calls into question the validity of a lot of what has been written and said about “original intent.”

For example, a bunch of inebriates might have scribbled the president has to be a “natural born citizen” with no clue what it means. Hell, for all we know, they meant “native born citizen” but slurred the words in their drunken stupor — this possibility could get more interesting as the debate over Crud’s eligibility heats up.

Oh senile one… You claimed you knew the answer before asking the question because “I didn’t say we apologized. I simply asked the question. And, like any good lawyer, I knew the answer before I asked it.”

Well senile FOOL, apparently you DIDN’T KNOW the answer before asking the question. This is what senile FOOLS do! They trump themselves up claiming to know everything like the stock market and and then when the real facts are really known they have to create errata in their next post. It wasn’t the Bushies you moron! And Clinton paid the reparations!

And another Puddy fail. Due to our renewed relationship with Iran, our sailors who got lost in Iranian waters are returned in less than 24 hours. Republicans try to make hay over this but it turns out to help the democrats even more. The “terrible” Iranians released our sailors immediately. Too funny how the republican fear mongers end up showing what idiots they are.

@32 People who are judgment proof because they haven’t a farthing to their names don’t have to worry about being sued. Only people with assets need lawyers and insurance. For example, I pay for a $1 million umbrella liability policy in case someone slips on a banana peel thrown from a passing car into the public street adjacent to my burrow.

It’s more complicated than this. For example, the Rubio vs Cruz sub theme is both interesting and revealing:

“An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll out Thursday showed exactly why the two are fighting. In a two-way race between Trump and Cruz, Cruz wins, 51% to 43%. But in a three-way race, Trump wins, with 40% to Cruz’s 31% and Rubio’s 26% — suggesting that the two can’t co-exist.”

Here’s what it looks like to me. This is a 3-person race between Trump, Cruz, and Rubio. Two of these candidates are unacceptable to the GOP establishment, and the other one is struggling in third place. If Rubio founders, Cruz is all they have left to stop Trump, and if Cruz gets fatally wounded, they’ll have to run with Trump against Bernie or Hillary. Things are grim and getting grimmer for GOP poobahs.

The Trump phenomenon isn’t so shocking when you think about it. For decades the GOP has fucked over their voter base in a big, big way. Slashing their wages, stealing their pensions, sending their jobs overseas, evicting them from their homes, sending their kids to die in foreign adventures that go awry, going after Social Security and Medicare which is basically all these people have left.

Distracting the hicks with wedge issues works only so long, and gets them only so far. Now they’ve got a major revolt on their hands. This is the GOP’s go-to-Jesus moment. Democrats and progressives should sit back, reach for the popcorn, and enjoy watching the angry Republican mob lynch the leaders of their own party.

47, 48, This should open up a pretty gaping credibility gap for the foreign-born Cruz with his corn belt support. And since he bought his election with Wall Street money, it won’t help him with the Teahadists either. Looking more solid for Trump all the time.

I simply asked the question. And, like any good lawyer, I knew the answer before I asked it.

Then: Couple of corrections to @26.

Then R senile expresses how he DIDN’T know the answer

So now we don’t have a right to edit our comments? I guess it’s understandable that a serial horseshitter [R senile] who never fact checks, edits, or corrects any of the horseshit he posts would say that.

@51 I always edit my comments, dumbass, because I can type faster than I can think. (How do you think I got to be HA’s #1 poster, with over 100,000 comments?) Anyone who types with my blazing speed inevitably makes errors, and 10 minutes isn’t always enough time to proofread and correct everything in a lengthy multi-paragraph comment.

But guess what? When I mistype, or make mistakes, I post the corrections. You NEVER correct ANY of YOUR errors, even though you’re factually incorrect nearly 100% of the time.

That’s the difference between a rabbit with intellectual integrity and a shit-for-brains parrot with a big beak and a bird brain.

Please Donate

I appreciate feeling appreciated. Also, money.

Currency:

Amount:

Can’t Bring Yourself to Type the Word “Ass”?

Eager to share our brilliant political commentary and blunt media criticism, but too genteel to link to horsesass.org? Well, good news, ladies: we also answer to HASeattle.com, because, you know, whatever. You're welcome!

Search HA

Follow Goldy

HA Commenting Policy

It may be hard to believe from the vile nature of the threads, but yes, we have a commenting policy. Comments containing libel, copyright violations, spam, blatant sock puppetry, and deliberate off-topic trolling are all strictly prohibited, and may be deleted on an entirely arbitrary, sporadic, and selective basis. And repeat offenders may be banned! This is my blog. Life isn’t fair.